the forum was intended to be a place to share climbing info and be a resource for the climbing community.

it is now clearly a place where it is ok for: sometimes over half the threads are political, not climbing photos of dead people are posted sexual photos are posted personal attacks are as common as posting info intended to help people out

so, i am going to propose a few things for cleaning up the forum:

1) for a few weeks i am going to relatively little except delete the really offensive stuff. but i am going to ask that when people see stuff that violates the forum rules THEY NOT RESPOND TO IT IN THE POSTS. Instead, send me an email. hopefully the offensive posts will get burried if nobody responds to them.

2) if that doesnt work, we will get two forums. one for climbing related stuff and one for non-climbing related stuff. if anyone tries to hijack climbing related threads, we will just ban them. we don't have time to weed out the threads, so we will just be deleting the users.

3) all along the way, I'll be using the whack amole technique that other have suggested and seems to be relative effective. so that it is not a surprise to people, read the next part carefully: I do not have time to warn people to stop breaking the forum rules. every once in a while ill give warnings, but for the most part i won't. i like to spend my time climbing, not being a forum cop.

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I appreciate your position, Chris, but if you have to implement #2 there will be no reason to come to this site. The mix is what it's all about (even if it does get out of hand at times) ;There are already enough climbing-nerd sites out there, and ditto for rant sites.
I'll be good, but if it gets too boring I'll be forced back to actual campfires at Crags!

I appreciate an effort to make things better, although if you ask me, the number of quality posters has never, ever been better. Things get out of hand for short times, and then the pendulum swings.

So I hope Chris will be able to define what acceptable to talk about in the forum, or better, just lay out the small territory that's unacceptable.

If the only acceptable content is strickly climbing related, then I believe the more experienced (sometime retired) poster here might be bored with it and things would get really, really small.

Perhaps that wouldn't be all bad for "Supertopo" as a business. The forum would be a seldom used backwater like many other climbing forums, but it wouldn't be a community, dystfuntional like most communities, that it is. For me, that would be a shame.

My opinion, rather than strictly regulate content, split the forum and let a thousand flowers bloom. Few who know what they are doing want to be 24/7 tech support to the climbing world.

Bob, are you really that silly? Constitutional law applies to the limits the government may or may not go to intrude on your rights. This is a privately owned website. You have no first ammendment rights here.

Chris: The change is need, but I am sorry you have to be involved, I'm sure it sucks to have to police a bunch of middle schoolers. Don't waste your time moderating each forum-I agree with the just nuke it option. Everyone will get the picture before to long and moderate themselves. Lately I have tried to avoid the political threads by not even opening them up but that seems not to be possible any longer (thanks Matt)

The JUST NUKE'EM policy has my vote. Those who don't learn should then be banned.

I would quickly sacrifice the political crap to save the quality climbing related discussions on this site.

No one should have to waste climbing time to police ST-let the politics go somewhere else.

If you want to exercise your first amendment rights-go stand on the public street corner with all the other wackos.

Another optioin would be to have some way to have the community Flag a post if it is offensive. This seems to work well on craigslist and other forums I have seen. Once a post has been flagged by a critical mass, it automatically deletes. Once you have had more than one post deleted then you are banned. Sort of a self regulating system.

LEB I think this forum goes pretty easy on the sexist remarks, because everyone posting knows a few ladies that can out climb us. They have more than proven their mettle and most of the supertopo posters are a little better educated than your average construction worker.

the issue is too many political threads and climbing threads that are hijacked and steered away by political issues.

right now, everything seems cool. a few weeks ago, there was a time when it seemed like 30% or more of the threads were political. and i was getting a lot of emails from people saying "Hey, i cam to this site for climbing info... why do i have to wade through all this other crap"

the other stuff: like posting photos of dead people, sexual stuff, and all the back and forth personal attacks - that stuff has to go. if you have a personal problem with someone, work it out over email. don't make the rest of us watch.

I think your idea of creating 2 forums is great. Of late there have seemed to be MANY postings of a non climbing nature. Sure we all get a kick out of them. Many of us have laughed at Satan and Donney as well as the PTP and Jody threads. However why not move the non climbing bs to a non climbing section. Well that's my 2 specks of dirt.

Although I rarely post here, I am a frequenty (daily) visitor. I just wanted to drop my two cents in on this issue because I do feel strongly about it.

I can do without the sex and the dead bodies (missed that actually), but I am a firm believer in an open forum. As Ed pointed out, the First Amendment does not apply here, but there are guiding principles we can learn from. So let me set out my philosophy:

I am an adult. I have absolute power over what all of you say and post. That power comes in the form of what I click on. I can easily ignore the political threads (they are fairly obvious). I occasionally find them amusing, however. Of course, I've never posted in a political thread. There's no need. The members here are all intelligent and capable of defending their respective positions. More importantly, we are a diverse community. Even if I remain silent, my views are represented.

All of this is leading up to the idea that we are, as Karl put it, a community, albeit a dysfunctional one. The openness of the forum is what gives it it's character. To curtail that openness runs counter to why I love this place so much. So . . . reasonable limits on decency are fine (I occasionally go to forums on other hobbies that I would be ashamed for friends to see some o fthe crap that's posted, so I'm all for decency). But let's not get overzealous in cleaning up the place. If we do, we lose the very character that makes this such a great place.